Coding and Capability-Building in Nonprofit Digital-Native News Organizations in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Latin America (LATAM)

Abstract

Digital journalism scholars highlighted a gap in scholarly knowledge concerning data journalism in the Global South, emphasizing the importance of data literacy in newsrooms. This article investigates the coding capabilities within digital-native nonprofit news organizations amidst global digital inequalities, focusing on the MENA (Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Sudan, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates) and LATAM (Argentina, Costa Rica, Peru, Venezuela, and the unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico) regions. We conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with 15 organizations and analyzed emerging themes to understand coding capabilities in the context of sustaining available resources and mitigating existing constraints.

This study concludes that the significance of adopting coding for nonprofit digital-native news organizations in MENA and LATAM is likely to increase, given the persistence of the existing political and economic conditions. Moreover, this study recognizes that certain news innovation trends related to coding, originally from the Global North, such as innovation labs, are gaining traction in the Global South. However, it also highlights variations among regions within the Global South regarding the adoption of coding in news organizations.

Keywords:

• Programming
• investigative journalism
• COVID
• AI tools
• Big tech
• journalist safety
• open source

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Interview with Sandra Crucianelli, head of the Data Unit of INFOBAE, Argentina on May 10, 2022.

2 Interview with Sandra Crucianelli, head of the Data Unit of INFOBAE, Argentina on May 10, 2022.

3 Interview with Khalid Waleed from ARIJ on March 2, 2022.

4 Interview with Khalid Waleed from ARIJ on March 2, 2022.

5 Interview with Emna Chebaane, editorial director at Inkyfada on June 4, 2022.

6 Interview with César Batiz on August 12, 2022.

7 Interview with Omar Mostafa, digital strategist at AlFanar on May 12, 2022.

8 Interview with Khalid Waleed from ARIJ on March 2, 2022.

9 Interview with Juan Carlos Villacorta, Editor of Infomercado on July 28, 2022.

10 Interview with Hassan Abbas of Raseef22 on June 2, 2022.

11 Interview with Khalid Mohammed, editorial manager at Erem News on March 12, 2022.

12 Interview with Khalid Waleed from ARIJ on March 2, 2022.

13 Interview with Rigoberto Carvajal from EL Clip in Costa Rica on July 22, 2022.

14 Interview with Carla Minet of Centro de Periodismo Investigativo, Puerto Rico on May 13, 2022.

15 Interview with Romina Mella of IDL-Reporteros on August 16, 2022.

16 Interview with César Batiz of El Pitazo on August 12, 2022.

17 Interview with Antonio Aguillón on February 11, 2022,.

18 Interview with Salam Omer, editor in chief of KirkukNow on June 21, 2022.

19 An Anonymous interview with an Andariya member.

20 Interview with Sandra Crucianelli of INFOBAE, Argentina on May 10, 2022.

21 Interview with Juan Carlos Villacorta, Editor of Infomercado on July 28, 2022.

22 (Interview with author, 2022).

23 (interview with author, 2022).

24 Interview with Juan Carlos Villacorta, Editor of Infomercado on July 28, 2022.

25 Interview with Juan Carlos Villacorta, Editor of Infomercado on July 28, 2022.